Great-West Lifeco Inc. has announced:
the completion of its offering of 8,000,000 5.25% Non-Cumulative First Preferred Shares, Series S through a syndicate of underwriters co-led by BMO Capital Markets and Scotiabank for gross proceeds of $200 million. The Series S Shares will be listed for trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol “GWO.PR.S”.
GWO.PR.S is a Straight Perpetual, 5.25%, announced May 13. Note that since it is issued by an insurance holding company, I have assumed that it will be not be NVCC-compliant when (I expect, but cannot guarantee!) the NVCC rules are applied to insurers and insurance holding companies. I have therefore added a “Deemed Maturity” to the call schedule, meaning that analysis assumes it will be called for redemption 2025-1-31 at the latest. This issue will be tracked by HIMIPref™ and assigned to the DeemedRetractible subindex.
The issue traded 879,041 shares today in a range of 25.005-13 before closing at 25.10-13, 132×3. Vital statistics are:
GWO.PR.S | Deemed-Retractible | YTW SCENARIO Maturity Type : Hard Maturity Maturity Date : 2025-01-31 Maturity Price : 25.00 Evaluated at bid price : 25.10 Bid-YTW : 5.23 % |
According to Implied Volatility Theory (inasmuch as it applies to DeemedRetractibles!) GWO.PR.S is priced right in line with expectations: